Has sporadically provocative and amusing moments, but remains poorly synthesized, somewhat unfocused and leaves you feeling underwhelmed and hungry for more enlightenment about yoga and spirituality.
Comment
04/01/09
Enlighten Up! (2009)
56
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:34
Fresh:19
Rotten:15
Average Rating:6/10
Consensus: Enlighten Up! is a funny, warmhearted documentary that's uneven in spots, but thought-provoking nonetheless.
Runtime: 82 mins
Genre: Education/General Interest
Synopsis: Kate Churchill is a filmmaker and a dedicated yoga practitioner who insists that yoga can transform anyone. She decides to prove it. Her plan: select a subject, immerse him in yoga and follow him... [More]
Reviews for Enlighten Up!
What Enlighten Up illustrates about the dynamic between filmmaker and subject is even more interesting than what it says about yoga.
06/12/09
When Nick encounters B.K.S. Iyengar, the legendary guruji and one of the foremost figures of yoga, Churchill's mostly lightweight film radiates some spiritual light.
05/29/09
Enlighten Up! is a low-key, charming trip.
06/19/09
There's a lot of talk about the downward-facing dog in Enlighten Up, a yoga documentary I'm giving the downward-facing thumb.
06/12/09
Enlighten Up! tries to answer yoga's burning question - what came first, downward facing dog or spiritual dogma?
04/03/09
Enlighten Up! is at least occasionally skeptical of the premise that true things might be articulated and disseminated.
04/07/09
A thought-provoking documentary that provides an up-close and personal look at the quest for spiritual meaning in yoga.
04/02/09
What elevates the movie is the refusal of Rosen -- a grounded, non-believing pragmatist — to make the conversion to yoga spirituality and bliss that Churchill so wants for him, and for the arc of her documentary.
04/23/09
Director Kate Churchill ends up with a non-story in her feature Enlighten Up! when her subject fails to experience the changes she had been expecting.
08/28/09
A fast-moving, often humorous documentary about a young man's search for his "higher self" through yoga.
03/27/09
Weirdly, it's the documentarian who seems to unravel throughout.
08/28/09
The premise ends up muddling a movie that might have been enlightening.
05/08/09
Moves toward an inconclusive destination while offering a few glimpses of bliss along the way.
04/03/09
An alternatively funny and revealing flick which dares to knock some seemingly sacrosanct gurus off their lofty pedestals.
04/14/09
What's Rosen's dating life got to do with yoga? Nothing really, beyond a director's last-ditch attempt to show dramatic tension in her film before it peters out into inconclusiveness.
08/27/09
When she inserts herself into the action, she reveals only her own insecurity. It ends up being very enlightening, but probably not in the way Churchill intends.
06/12/09
The film doesn’t force an artificial resolution on their battle of wills, which may be the most enlightened thing about it.
04/01/09
Rosen makes a good correlative for all of us who don't doubt that flexibility and fitness are worthy goals but who cringe at some of the quasi-religious babble that seems inextricably bound up with yoga.
05/15/09
While Enlighten Up! is ultimately just a surface look at yoga, it's still interesting, if not exactly enlightening, to watch the true believer and the jaded New York journo clash their way down the road to, one hopes, some sort of spiritual resolution.
06/19/09
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